Bomb threats empty 3 campuses

Thousands of people streamed off three college campuses yesterday as bomb threats prompted officials to issue evacuation orders for schools in Ohio, Texas and North Dakota.

Thousands of people streamed off three college campuses yesterday as bomb threats prompted officials to issue evacuation orders for schools in Ohio, Texas and North Dakota.

The campuses of the University of Texas at Austin and North Dakota State University in Fargo had been deemed safe by early afternoon, and authorities were working to determine whether the threats were related.A third evacuation order for much-smaller Hiram College in northeastern Ohio was issued after the school received an emailed bomb threat about 4 p.m. It remained in effect for several hours before the school gave the “all clear” and reopened the campus yesterday evening. Earlier, the college posted a statement on its website saying that crews with bomb-sniffing dogs were checking all buildings on the campus about 35 miles southeast of Cleveland. The school has about 1,300 enrolled.

The threats on the much-larger campuses in Texas and North Dakota also ended as false alarms after tens of thousands of people followed urgently worded evacuation orders.

Both of those campuses emptied at quick but orderly paces yesterday morning, though students acknowledged an air of confusion about what was going on. The threats came as violent protests outside U.S. embassies in the Middle East also stirred tension among some students, and Texas officials acknowledged that global events were taken into account.

The first threat came about 8:35 a.m. to the University of Texas from a man claiming to belong to al-Qaida, officials said. The caller claimed bombs placed throughout campus would go off in 90 minutes, but administrators waited more than an hour before blaring sirens on the campus of 50,000 students and telling them to immediately “get as far away as possible” in emergency text messages.

Authorities started searching buildings for explosives before the alert was issued. UT President Bill Powers defended the decision not to evacuate sooner.

“It’s easy to make a phone call … the first thing we needed to do was evaluate,” Powers said. “ If the threat had been for something to go off in five minutes, then you don’t have the time to evaluate, you just have to pull the switch.”

Not everyone agreed.

“What took so long?” student Ricardo Nunez said. “It should have been more immediate.”

North Dakota State University President Dean Bresciani said about 20,000 people left the Fargo school’s campuses as part of an evacuation “that largely took place in a matter of minutes.” FBI spokesman Kyle Loven said NDSU received a call about 9:45?a.m. that included a “threat of an explosive device.”

Police and school officials said the evacuation was as organized as could be expected, with one campus employee describing people as “being North Dakota nice” while driving away.

“Nobody was panicked and nobody was trying to speed or run over anybody,” said Juleen Berg, who works at the NDSU heating plant. “Everybody was waiting their turn.”

Also yesterday, Valparaiso University in Indiana increased security and posted a warning to students on its website after a vague threat was discovered scrawled in graffiti. The school said the threat claimed “dangerous and criminal activity” would occur during the university’s daily chapel break.

The FBI and local authorities searched the campus but found nothing suspicious.